TikTok insiders and creators are worried that the app won't be as good anymore after ByteDance is forced to divest its U.S. business to Oracle and a group of international investors. One TikTok staffer told Business Insider, “The algo is what makes TikTok great. Will a retrain be as good?”
The TikTok U.S. spinoff requires that:
- ByteDance hand over the business, including its U.S. user data and algorithms, to the new owners to comply with the law.
- Oracle will audit its algorithm, which will be “retrained and operated in the United States outside of ByteDance's control.”
The challenge with that plan for ByteDance is finding a way to hand over its complex system without giving away all of its trade secrets.
The challenge for Oracle will be to retrain a new “For You” feed without destroying the magic behind the current recommendation system.
Nicole Ellison, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Information who has coauthored two papers on TikTok's algorithmic personalization, says the algorithm is more complicated than just code that can be easily duplicated. Her colleague, Paul Resnick, adds that uncoupling the algorithms from ByteDance's workforce of machine-learning scientists and engineers will also be a challenge because Oracle's engineers have no experience with the recommendation system.
Rather than directly hand over the algorithm code, ByteDance could:
- offer access to its algorithms via API — however that would give ByteDance access to user data, which would not comply with the U.S. law.
- offer a data clean room that allows entities to compare data without sharing personal information. ByteDance built its own version a few years ago.
- retain some control over the algorithm after the sale — which could receive pushback from U.S. officials.
A former TikTok product staffer that spoke to Business Insider is skeptical that the new owners will be able to replicate TikTok's magic on their own. He said, “It will literally take years to retrain the thousands of models that power the TikTok algorithm.”
The ironic part of all this is that the new owners will likely have a bigger agenda to manipulate the algorithm than what they've accused ByteDance of all these years!